Energy company obligations in Britain – two important papers

Energy savings obligations in the UK – a history of change: Jan Rosenow of the Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford has produced a paper for a special issue of the journal Energy Policy that looks at Energy Savings Obligations in the UK. More specifically, it discusses how the policy instrument changed over time and what the drivers of that change were. The UK was the first country in Europe that introduced obligations on suppliers to save energy at the customer end in 1994. Since then this policy changed rapidly and is now the principal instrument to deliver energy savings in the housing stock. The paper aims to answer three questions: First, how did the policy instrument change over time? Second, what were the key drivers of that change? Third, how did those pressures filter through the policy process and affect the energy savings obligations?

The report is available at: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421512005629

The Green Deal and the Energy Company Obligation – will it work?  Jan Rosenow teamed up with Nick Eyre to produce this paper for an academic conference in Oxford in September.  As they state in their abstract: Our research suggests that the Green Deal / Energy Company Obligation will only deliver carbon reduction at a rate of approximately one quarter of the policies it replaces – the Carbon Emissions Reduction Target and the Community Energy Savings Obligation. This paper provides a critical analysis of the proposed policy changes both in terms of the institutional changes and the implications of a new finance mechanism for energy efficiency policy as well as the overall impact on carbon reduction.  The paper points out a number of concerns.  The paper is available here.